


all the miles in between

by oh_simone



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Drama, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, lots of driving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-apocalyptic roadtripping, and music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the miles in between

 

[ ](http://pics.livejournal.com/oh_simone/pic/00012qcq/)

[miles from monterey - west indian girl](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nATJBud8hTQ)

Relentless heat shimmers the air around them, warping and distorting the lines of asphalt that stretches ahead of them, but with the windows rolled down, it’s a little more bearable than otherwise. The backseat is littered with empty Rockstar cans and greasy used napkins. There’s a plastic net bag of clementines that Stiles had picked up in a spasm of junk-food induced guilt, but has remained untouched in the past three hours. They have been driving for six, and have at least another three before even hitting the state freeway, but Derek’s hand on the wheel is still steady and his expression is calm, but alert. Most of the energy drinks had been consumed by Stiles, actually, in the face of severe disapproval, but Stiles chalks that up to plain envy; the werewolf’s metabolism renders the joys of caffeine utterly useless, and really, Stiles would be pissed too if everything he drank suddenly turned out decaf.

He feels the afternoon daze heavy on his consciousness as his head presses against the sun-warm glass of car window. They’ve been driving for miles and miles now, on the way to nowhere, somewhere, anywhere, and Stiles is a little shocked that this familiar complacency of car riding can still happen after the world officially ends. There’s no one else on the road; hasn’t been, not since they snuck past the Bakersfield blockade two hours ago, and even then, it was only a woman in a wrinkled, loose cotton dress, watching them silent and dead-eyed at the gas station pump. She had been standing in the door, clutching a bundle tightly, and her eyes had tracked them as they drove past, but she’d made no move to slow them down.

There’s a soft rasp, and Stiles glances over at Derek, who’s been at the wheel the entire morning and well into the afternoon. He’s frowning slightly and glancing at the AAA map of California highways he’s pinned loosely against the wheel.

“Need me to navigate?” Stiles offers half-heartedly, rolling his head up against the glass rather than sitting up.

Derek grunts. “You’d navigate us off a cliff,” he replies flatly, but there’s no animosity in it. Stiles would be offended if he hadn’t directed them to four dead-ends yesterday as they tried to find alternative routes out of the city with streets blocked and smoking.

“Drive on then, oh fearless leader,” Stiles shrugs, and closes his eyes. He opens them again, barely a minute later, blinking away after images of the university library melting into chaos, the tanks that crushed past the narrow pedestrian walkways, accompanying machine guns at full rat-tat-tat, the shrieking soundtrack of screams and bullets and the whistling whine of missiles overhead. His roommate’s eyes were blue, but he can only remember the way blood had seeped over the iris, pinking and clouding the stunned, dead whites. Out here, the sky is a calm, clear blue, and the fields are green from recent rains.

Stiles shudders, a full body wracking that makes Derek glance over briefly, before turning back towards the road, mouth at a thin, flat line. Swallowing the sour taste of bile from his mouth, Stiles wipes his hand over his face, and pulls himself up higher onto the seat.

“D’you think,” he rasps, then coughs, clears his throat, and tries again. “You think… they’re okay?”

Derek doesn’t say anything for the longest time and Stiles can’t bring himself to look at him. He feels the shrug displacing the air between them, more than sees it.

“The evac orders extended to Salinas,” the older man says, neutrally. “That could mean either they’re out of the danger zone.” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but it’s not like he needs to, because Stiles knows it already. The only other reason would be that they’re already gone. He feels sick again; the sides of the Camaro feel claustrophobic sudden, and he’s desperate to see someone else on this lonely abandoned highway. But there’s no one else in sight, only a whirring, blurring mass of quiet farmland and a sometimes-ally, something-more who drives on and on.

[crosses (tiesto remix) - jose gonzalez](http://hypem.com/track/13q71/Jose+Gonzalez+-+Crosses+%28Tiesto+Remix%29)

Coalinga is generically small town; the 33 and 198 double as main streets, as well as the site where an infamous bandit died in the 1800s. Elms stretch along the streets, which Stiles always finds disconcerting in otherwise flat, dust-baked farmland. There are some lights in the streets as their car rumbles through town, but whoever’s ignored evac orders and stayed behind are remaining cautious; Stiles sees curtains stretched tight and taped down over the windows, only the barest limns of light shining past the edges. No one comes out to greet them, and Derek seems to have no intention of stopping; his foot only lightens up on the pedal when they pull up at a gas pump.

“Stay inside,” Derek tells him shortly, before slamming the driver side closed. Stiles has no problems following directions; there’s a pervasive hostility and tension in the dry air that’s ratcheted up from the moment they crossed into town. He cranes his head, suddenly eager to keep both the main road and Derek in sight, because holy crap, he’s seen too many movies where unsuspecting folk are dragged off by crazed and mob-minded villagers. _Please,_ he begs mentally, _hurry up, Derek,_ and stares so intently that the man turns, catches his expression in the window, and very deliberately pivots away.

But no raging farmer ranting conspiracy theories and hefting flaming pitchforks come charging up at them. Instead, when the tank is full, Derek disappears into the station, and comes back with two bottles of water, a pack of beef jerky, and chips. He tosses them into Stiles’ lap, starts the car up, and they peel back out into the streets. The dizzying relief that washes over Stiles must be, in part, the town’s itself.

“Sun’s already down,” Stiles points out obligatorily, though he really doesn’t want to be stopping anywhere near other people for night.

Derek chews on a strip of dried beef before rumbling, “Not a good place to be. They would’ve shot us if we’d stayed any longer.”

So Stiles’ theory about rifles positioned out the windows was correct. “How do you know?”

“I could smell it,” Derek says, and Stiles shivers, and shuts up. After a tense second in which Stiles imagines, in Technicolor, all the terrible B-movie ways they could die, a warm weight drops onto his knee, startling him. Derek isn’t looking at him which, good, he should be watching the road anyways, but his hand is large, heavy and comforting. “Stop freaking out,” he orders softly. “You’re with me.”

It’s such a simple thing to say, and in anyone else it would be arrogance. But Stiles knows Derek, better than he wants, and from him it’s a statement of fact. And behind that statement lays a well-deep sentiment that Stiles has gotten better at detecting these past few days. He swallows against the tightness in his throat, tries a little grin that no one sees, but Derek must detect anyways, because his shoulders relax fractionally. He tries to draw his hand away, but Stiles latches on before he can. For a moment, neither of them breath, because this is as much an acknowledgement as it is simple comfort. Then Stiles twists his hand so they’re palm to palm, fingers entwined, and rests their hands on his lap as he looks back out the window where the darkness is absolute, nothing but headlight before them, and shadows all around.

[ordinary world - duran duran](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDLiVwpv89s)

Derek builds a fire and leaves Stiles with the simple instruction to make sure it doesn’t go out, and then ominously promises to bring back ‘dinner’. Ironic that the single greatest devastation visited upon the American nation’s west coast has allowed Derek to explore the full potential of his nature without fear of consequence. Derek drops into full form without bothering to check the perimeters, and Stiles barely smothers a squeak because Derek has always been so careful about shifting before. The great wolf gives Stiles a tongue-lolling version of his shit-eating grin and lopes easily into the forest, as much at ease in this skin as his human one, leaving Stiles poking at their campfire with his stick and thinking morbidly about Bambi. He would wish that Derek comes back empty-jawed, except that he’s really damn hungry, and it’s bad when he’s replaying the forest fire that killed Bambi’s mom and musing that it must have been a damn fine barbecue.

The Camaro is at his back, a silent, hulking black presence that is comforting and familiar. Stiles keeps his eyes away from the dented rear fender and the scratches that now mar its beautiful black finish; if he does, he can pretend he’s on a camp out with his Complication who happens to be spectacularly good at hunting things. They’ll take the thick, scratchy blanket from the trunk and spread it down near the fire, curl up shoulder-to-shoulder for warmth and watch the stars go down. Stiles will say anything that comes to mind; Derek will grunt peaceably and pointedly ignore his bullshit. When it gets cold, Stiles will sneak closer and closer until his hands are safe under Derek’s jacket. They’ll sleep curled into each other and when the dawn breaks, they will drive to Beacon Hill where Stiles’ dad will be waiting for him, alive, healthy, overjoyed.

A twig snaps and Stiles jerks up from where he’s slumped in his daydream. There is someone or something just beyond the tree line. He suddenly feels the thump of blood pounding in his ears and soft, under-wrists. It wouldn’t be Derek; the were is silent as shadows. Footsteps were in the dominion of humans.

Adrenaline rushes through him as he scrambles to his feet, hands clenching his dinky little stick tightly as he faces the direction of the footsteps. The sounds pause, and Stile holds his breath a long moment, long enough for his bravado to overtake his mouth.

“I know you’re there, so why don’t you just stop wasting our time and skip the dramatic pause?” He curses himself silently as soon as the words slip out; great, he’s just literally invited any possible nutjob to bumrush him. At his feet, the fire crackles and pops, the flames throwing dancing flickers of light against the pitted shadows of the trees and rocks around him, but Stiles keeps his body tense and ready to body check any possible threat. Well. To a certain physical level.

The rustling starts again, determinedly, and Stiles nervously shifts as a stranger steps from the shadows. He’s a lanky, grimy faced man with hollow cheeks and wide, sunken eyes. His skin is creased and tan from sun and age, and his hair is graying, wispy over his hunched shoulders. Stiles gives himself two seconds to take all that in, and redirects his attention to the dented black crowbar the stranger has in one hand, and keeps it there. Oh, god, Stiles thinks, a little sick. The surface of the crowbar looks slightly mottled and uneven. Vividly, he remembers playing Half-Life, and gleefully smashing in the heads of zombies with one. Shit, oh, _shit_.

“Hello,” Stiles says, too loud and nervous to modulate his voice. “Hi. What can I get you?” he finishes lamely, because apparently, half a year in the on-campus Starbucks has internalized this reaction as automatic in times of hangover, sleep deprivation, and first encounters of the creepy kind.

The man’s expression is hard and sly and inscrutable, but he grins hard at that as he walks slowly into the circle of firelight. Stiles grips his twig and wishes to god he’d brought his lacrosse stick.

“The roads’re closed here, son,” the old man drawls hoarsely with a terrible excuse for a grin. Seriously. Stiles kind of wants to hand the guy a pack of Orbit. “You’re very brave to be trespassin’.”

“Yes, well, you know,” Stiles coughs nervously, jabs at the fire and hopes the stick somehow lights up so he can throw it, if necessary. Where the hell is Derek? “I’m leaving— _we’re_ leaving, that is. I’m not the only one, you know, got friends in,” he gestures inanely, “woodsy places.”

“Do you?” the man seems irritatingly unconcerned, and Stiles realizes with a jolt that he thinks he’s lying. Ha! “I must admit, I am admiring that black beauty behind you. A working vehicle,” he drawls, stretching out the first syllable. “A man could find that quite useful, especially in these tough times.” His smile is disturbingly and transparently insincere, and filled with hard, cold intent.

“This old thing,” Stiles scoffs, rolling his eyes so hard his head does too, and reaches back to smack Derek’s car. “Right. It’s you know. Between me and you, it’s a piece of crap,” he stage-whispers. “You know what’s a real car? Jeeps. Those babies last you a lifetime. Two, even. I’m still driving my dad’s old Wrangler, well,” Stiles amends with a truly awful moment of mourning for his car, still in the ruins of his university, “I did anyways.”

The stranger’s expression doesn’t change from its frozen leer. It occurs to Stiles how ridiculous this situation is; half of the north-pacific coast is torn ragged, radiation levels are spiking all across the world, and the East Coast has been bombed so heavily they’ve practically sunk below sea level, and Stiles is going to die in the creepiest carjacking in all of history. Fuck his life.

“Fuck my life,” he says out loud, and bursts into motion, whipping his stick at the intruder. The man dodges, ungainly but effectively, and his expression turns ugly. The crowbar goes up, and Stiles stumbles back against the Camaro, hands scrabbling at the door and wishing he had something more useful against a crowbar than the car keys.

“Nothing personal, kid,” the man promises savagely, and swings. Stiles ducks instinctively and squeezes his eyes shut, hears the windows of the car shatter and glass rains down his head, slicing the top edge of his ear, but the pain doesn’t even register because one moment, Stranger Danger is about to smash open his skull, and the next, a horrible roaring shudders the air and Crowbar Man is shrieking in the most beautiful sound of fear and pain that Stiles has ever heard. Another moment passes, and then Stiles feels warm, soft fur crowding against his knees, and he opens his eyes to Derek growling a constant, threatening rumble, lips peeled back in a savage snarl. With his fur on end, he looks twice his normal size, which is already huge, and his eyes are snapping a demonic angry red. He is poised for attack, ears cocked, and crouched low. The man is backing away, stumbling to his feet and clutching his chest where Derek had landed, eyes wild in horror and fear. Derek lunges forward, jaws snapping together in a sharp clap, and the man bolts, crashing from the circle of firelight into the bramble of the woods.

Stiles watches, dizzy with relief, and then his shoulders slump and he thumps his head back against the side of the car. His pulse is beating a jittery relentless pattern under his skin, and he wants to throw up, but can’t find the energy to do it. That almost beat creepy Uncle Alpha’s unveiling for Worst Moment of his life, though without an equally creepy nurse hovering in the background, Peter’s moment is safe, Stiles decides hysterically. The air besides him displaces with a soft whoosh, and then Stiles feels a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Derek asks quietly.

“Yeah,” he says automatically, then, “Fuck, no way. Oh holy crap,” and drops his face into his hands, shuddering. “What—is this because the end of the world fucks people up, or was it just our luck to meet up with a batshit pyscho carjacker in the woods?”

Derek doesn’t answer, but his hands touch Stiles’ ear gently, and he flinches as a hot lick of pain flickers from the cut.

“You’re bleeding,” Derek says flatly.

“Only a little,” Stiles admits. “Window glass. Oh man, what are we gonna do about your car?” He’s about to ask about insurance, but stops himself just in time. What’s the point anyways?  
Still, Derek reaches into the car for the water and a napkin, and insists, “Let me clean it. Turn.” He doesn’t wait for Stiles to comply, just pushes his head down gently and pours a trickle of water over the cut, which stings a little.

“Ow.”

“Shut up.” Derek is quiet as he washes out the cut and wipes it dry meticulously. His inspection is thorough and involves a lot of manipulating Stiles’ head with his hands, which is actually kind of nice and comforting, and not for the first time does Stiles wonder what Derek might be doing, had his family not died and the world not just ended. He’d make a good nurse, he thinks.  
Derek’s face pulls into an incredulous grimace, and Stiles realizes he’d said that out loud.

“Don’t get used to it,” is all he says though, gruff but amused and Stiles feels his spirit rally.

“I’ll bet you’d be the favoritest murse of all,” he says happily. “You’d make scrubs look better than Hugo Boss. All the little old ladies would ask you to change their bed pans and pinch your butt, and leave big tips. Do you tip nurses?”

Growling, Derek smacks him between the shoulders, and Stiles giggles. This is—how is this scene, this conversation, how is this even real life anymore? His life has gone from a cheesy HBO supernatural drama to a cheap Sy-Fy thriller.

“Hey,” Derek says tentatively, but Stiles can barely hear him over the sound of his own wild, uncontrollable laughter; it hurts coming out of him, but he can’t stop laughing hysterically, because if he does, Stiles thinks he might cry. Besides him, the bulk of Derek shifts, and then he’s being gathered in close. Stiles smashes his face against Derek’s shirt and crushes Derek’s jacket in his grip.

“I need—Jesus Christ,” Stiles gasps, throat thick and hurting and breaking his words into pieces. “Scott and—oh, Jesus, my _dad_ -”

“Tomorrow,” Dereks tells him low and firm. His palm never stops smoothing warm circles against Stiles’ hunched back. “We’ll find them.”

[please please please let me get what i want - the smiths](http://hypem.com/track/1qt1h/The+Smiths+-+Please,+Please,+Please)

Derek just “happened” to be in town. That’s what Stiles tells his friends and roommate anyways. ‘Hey, guys, this is someone from back home. He’s passing through. Watch out; his bite is worse than his bark, haha, no really.’

The truth is a little more complicated than that; if Stiles were being absolutely honest, he could pinpoint it to junior prom, behind the dumpsters, and see, that? Is why Stiles hates being absolutely honest. Who wants anything to do with the back of dumpsters unless you’re gunning for a stellar career in shady drug dealing? But in this case, behind the dumpster was where he wound up after his date ditched him for some tennis playing douchebag. To clarify, behind the dumpster, drunk on spiked punch, and his pants around his ankles. To be absolutely clear, all that, with a side of werewolf enthusiastically and thoroughly debauching him. Stiles can now proudly subscribe to the lost-your-v-card-on-prom-night club, but he doubts he anyone else can claim his exact methodology.

Prom nights are special, when weird, inexplicable, socially unthinkable things happen. It’s like Saturnalia, condensed into one airless, sweaty room of cheap party tinsel and pubescent youth and bad top 40s pop. Stiles knows all this, understands it well. Which is why when he woke up the following morning, he expected things to go on per usual: namely, Derek going back to his slightly sneering disdain of him, and _not_ ravishing him in questionable places.

But it did happen. And, most surprisingly of all, it continued happening, not stopping over the summer nor the following school year. It wasn’t every night, sometimes not even every _month_ , but it got so that Stiles started leaving his windows unlocked at night. And it wasn’t a relationship; Stiles almost died when Jackie from his freshman seminar and self-declared fag-hag referred to Derek as his ‘boyfriend’, because they were nothing of the kind. Actual, meaningful conversations with Derek can still be counted on two hands, and besides fooling around, they don’t actually _do_ anything else together. It was a habit. Like smoking, or biting your nails, or flossing, except infinitely more fun, or terrifying, depending.

But when Derek showed up on the steps of his dormitory a windy, sunny afternoon in April, it was more than just the usual apprehension and lust that Stiles felt. And had he any more time to think on it and figure out just what all this cold-shouldering and abrasiveness and messy kisses full of teeth and hisses meant, the end of the world began.

 

 

They hit the 101 freeway just about noon the next day, and immediately slow to a near crawl. Beyond the highway are fields of golden green grasses that slope down to the coast, and Stiles can see the light glinting off the water. And all along the highway are cracked, shafted blocks of asphalt. The carcasses of empty cars litter the edges of the road; they see upturned and sideways cars caught down the deep cliff sides. Stiles catches sight of an arm hanging from a crashed-out window, fingers and wrist curled almost artfully , and feels sour bile flood his mouth. The scene is eerily still, and neither of them talk as Derek navigates slowly among the idle, empty cars, driving down the shoulder when possible. To keep from going crazy, Stiles bends over and fiddles with the radio idly, dialing between static and static. Derek looks at him askance, but doesn’t say anything, whether it’s because he really doesn’t care, or because he sees Stiles is biting his teeth so hard his jaws ache, he can’t be sure.

The dial rolls between one number to the next with no variation in static except for volume, and Stiles is about to ask if Derek has any CDs or something in his car, when he catches something faint underlying that crackling white noise. Derek nearly sideswipes a crooked minivan as he whips his head around to stare at the radio. Incredulously, not quite daring to believe, Stiles carefully twiddles the controls, adjusting back and forth in minute movements that are hard to control because of his shaking fingers. But when they finally maneuver the reception into as good as they’re going to get, the music is audible, if faint and scratchy. And, after a few seconds of listening, Stiles realizes, recognizable too. It’s old and slow and eerily languid, the scratchy-smooth voice dripping honey and amusement with each syllable. Stiles cranks up the volume until the lyrics are just recognizable under the thick layer of white noise, and then wishes he hadn’t.

[I'll be seeing you](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXLB32n6lq8)  
In all the old familiar places  
That this heart of mine embraces  
All day through. 

The song fades in and out of reception. After it ends, there is silence for a moment, but a beat later, it repeats.

“Turn it off,” Derek orders curtly, and Stiles doesn’t bother to argue. It is uncomfortably like one person’s last attempt at humor while the world around them goes to hell. His grandmother would have frowned and call it in bad taste; Stiles just finds it unsettling.

They drive in silence until they’re forced to a stop. The Pacific Coast Highway is famed for its views, as well as its winding position amongst a steep ocean cliff. Either due to reverberating shocks throughout the coast or a stray explosive, a sheet of cliff has collapsed and slid into the Pacific, leaving and unbridgeable gap nearly a quarter mile wide.

Stiles gathers the rest of the food and water into the backpack and Derek lingers in his car, holding the wheel loosely, his thumb stroking the leather. Then he gets out and locks the door behind him. They continue on foot.

[the way - fastball](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0wfu3tOrtQ)

“Arby’s, after the first game in senior year.”

Derek squints into the distance, quiet for awhile before shrugging. “You were excited. I could smell it.”

Stiles makes a face and stumbled on a crack, reflexively grabbing onto Derek’s arm when he pitches forward. Derek absently balances him out, and they keep walking. “Hence, the groping in the men’s room,” Stiles grumbles. Derek shrugs, not at all sheepish. “Okay, okay. Uh, that Sunday before Valentines.”

Besides him, Derek smiles, briefly, smugly. “Superbowl,” he drawls, and Stiles nearly trips again in surprise. This time, Derek just raises an eyebrow and smirks at his scowl.

“Football,” Stiles says with a look both amused and dismayed. “Of course you watch it, and of course it gets you hot.” Did you play in school? Did you have a hot little kicker buddy or something? Stiles isn’t jealous. Not at all. Not even theoretically.

“Nah, nothing like that,” Derek shakes his head. “Played basketball for a while, but I was in gymnastics most of my life.” He smiled a little, just a quirk of his lips. “A lot of my family did it. It’s easy stuff when you’re part wolf.”

“Huh,” Stiles replies, thinking about that. He pictures Derek, whose arms can’t even lay flat along his sides his biceps are so built, whose back and abs are so defined he can grate cheese on them, who free-runs like the entire world is his personal playground, wearing white pants and looping lazy, easy circles around a high bar. It distracts him sufficiently that he almost walks into a tree. “I can see that,” he says weakly.

Derek is laughing silently at him, Stiles is sure, but outwardly, the older man just smirks and strides ahead. Stiles curses him fervently, but he doesn’t mind so much. The sad thing is this is probably the longest, most normal conversation he’s had with Derek, ever. What does it mean if it takes their entire world falling apart for the two of them to even resemble normality?

[one headlight - the wallflowers](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzyfcys1aLM)

They take a blue Subaru whose owners hadn’t bothered to lock up when they fled or died or whatever. It’s late afternoon and hot by the time they’ve rounded the collapsed road back onto the connecting highway, and at least the sea breeze is stiff and cool. Stiles hotwires the car, because it’s something his slightly criminal uncle once showed him how to do, and Derek seems faintly impressed when he does it successfully, probably since he didn’t electrocute himself in the process.

There’s only an hour’s drive left to Beacon Hill. By sundown, Stiles will know whether his town has survived the worst or not, and as they travel northwards, his hopes begin to glimmer and fade. Nothing alive is on these roads. Not birds or bugs. Cars are silent. Windows are dark. Not even Billie Holiday is playing on the radio anymore. Stiles doesn’t realize he’s locked up tenser than piano string until the warm shock of Derek’s palm meets the back of his neck.

“What if they’re dead?” Stiles blurts out, and it sounds high and broken and terrified. “What if Dad didn’t make it out in time, and Scott and his mom—what if we get there and everyone is dead in their beds, or what if they were bombed out? What if— _dammit_!”

Derek abruptly throws the car in park and Stiles lurches into his seatbelt painfully. He rubs his shoulder resentfully, but before he can speak, Derek’s unbuckled himself and his hands are sliding under Stiles’ chin, angling them up for a long, slow, and thorough kiss. It’s been days since they’ve done this, but the dizzying storm of wantmissedthisneed _please_ slams through him, that sudden whorl of spine-melting sweetness and the surprising catch of warm-hot skin and breath against his. And just like that, he’s aching for this, desperate for any distraction, for his mind to stop whirling with possibilities of pain and loss. This is simple, physical, _now_ , and he wants it so bad. Stiles’ mind blanks completely. He’s arching into Derek before he realizes, hand coming up to slide through black hair.

Derek pulls back before Stiles can completely comprehend. A small, unhappy noise makes its way out of Stiles’ throat, and he sways towards Derek. But Derek holds him back and looks at him steadily, not even having the decency to be winded, though there is a faint widening of his pupils. “Better?” he asks.

Stiles swallows a little, scrambles to relearn how to talk. “Was that really necessary?” he croaks, but not that resentfully. There is really nothing much he can resent about sporadic making out with a hot guy.

“You need to stop thinking,” Derek says.

“Okay,” Stiles replies slowly. “Though I don’t think it works like-”

He finds his mouth engaged again, and this time gives into the urge to surge out of his seat, half across the gear shift, Derek’s hands firm around his waist. A good age later, Derek pulls back again, now both of them breathing hard, and stares into Stiles’ eyes. Stiles is maybe missing his shirt, and Derek’s hair is kind of adorably unfixable, and Stiles just wants wants wants to always come back to this moment, forever, whatever happens to them from this point on.

“Stop. Thinking,” Derek instructs, voice a little hoarse and rumbly, and boy, if that doesn’t just do the opposite.

Stiles works his mouth a little more, his breath still coming in fast, and squints. “If I say I can’t, will you try to convince me again?”

Derek slaps his head, but fondly, and pulls him back down.

[boston - augustana](http://www.box.net/shared/7bo8srrn2l16ej8fdl5u)

So they have dirty, desperate, really-awkward-and-kind-of-bruising-in-some-places sex in the front seat of an ugly car before they roll into what’s left of Beacon Hill. Stiles isn’t perfect, and he never claimed to be. But he can’t be sorry for it, because every good, awesome moment of that makes seeing the utter abandonment of his hometown slightly less… surreal. There are blackened plots of road and devastated buildings, walls streaked black with soot and cragged holes torn into the ground. At one point, Derek pulls over, drives through a massive hole in a wall right into the side of what used to be Mr. Lee’s liquor store when a Kiowa helicopter drones by overhead. Stiles stares at aisles of smashed glass and dried brown stains on the linoleum in silence, hunched into the window for the fifteen minutes Derek makes them stay there. He tries not to figure out the exact things going through his mind; he doesn’t want to know the scenarios his imagination can dredge up so he counts the scattered Doritos on the ground instead.

“We should walk,” Derek says after he’s checked that the copter is out of visible distance. “Two moving figures are harder to track than one big car.”

“We’re breaking so many laws,” Stiles mouths, half-awed at his own audacity and follows Derek as they pick their way out of the wreckage of the store. He wonders if this is how vigilantes feel.

It takes about five minutes to drive from the store to Stiles’ home, so naturally, the walk is almost an hour, what with the obstacle course of a post-apocalyptic suburban landscape. There is no one else around; no one alive that is. Derek moves purposefully past the empty, burned out hulls of cars and homes but Stiles drifts along, feeling like he’s in some tamped down nightmare videogame. He can’t help filling in the blanks around him. Did people scream here too? The military never reached this place; there are no tracks of tanks or shells around here, so everyone here had to manage on their own, with their fifteen man police force, oh Christ. Did anyone even survive?

The numbness lasts him until they reach Stiles’ street, and then he’s suddenly terrified to advance further than the curb. Derek walks on ahead of him, then turns to him when he realizes Stiles is clutching the mailbox in a death grip, cold sweat along his brows.

“He’s not here,” Derek says, and Stiles’ gaze snaps to him so fast he’s dizzy.

“What?” It comes out sharper than he means, and tinged with something nervous and highstrung.  
Derek walks back and stares down intently at him, holding his eyes. “Your father,” he says clearly, “is not in that house.”

The words take an age for his mind to string together and process as a sentence, as meaning, but when it does, Stiles’ knees go weak, and Derek hauls him up by his forearms before he can faceplant into the concrete.

“Let’s go inside,” Derek suggests quietly, and keeps his hand on Stiles as they make their way through the front door.

Inside, everything is in chaos; the dishtowel is, for some reason, crumpled over the shoerack, and furniture has been shoved around haphazardly. Doors to the closet, pantry, drawers, have all been pulled out and left swinging. There’s still food in the fridge, but the electricity had cut out days ago and there’s nothing edible left.

Stiles makes the rounds in a daze, going into his room, then his dad’s, noting the state of the closet, the hastily upended drawer of undershirts. There’s dried smears of blood on the bedspread, but it doesn’t look like a whole lot, so Stiles holds onto that thought and tries not to let the hope strangle him. He drifts downstairs then, where Derek is waiting for him at the dining room table. His arms are crossed, and he’s eyeing something on the surface of the table.

“What is it?” Stiles asks, and he feels tired as he comes next to him. But the next moment jolts through him like electricity.

“Well?” Derek asks after a long moment. “What do you think?”

Stiles touches the sheet of paper with trembling fingers before picking it up.

It’s the rough, pixelated print out of a map, black-and-white and still crisp around the edges. There’s a highlighter route drawn hastily in a zig-zag line down to a circled town name, and all that’s written on it is, _Stiles, I’ll try to be there_.

“It’s where my mom grew up,” Stiles says roughly, folding the map up carefully. “Santa Fe. It’s fucking all the way back.” He feels a sort of aborted anger and wrenching fear that this is all too late, everything’s too late. Of course his dad’s trying to get to Santa Fe; he should have known before dragging the two of them back into this dead zone.

Derek’s shoes scrape across the kitchen then, and Stiles raises his head to see him picking through the pantry, scrutinizing dusty cans of peas and Spam. When he realizes Stiles is staring at him, he only lifts one eyebrow. “Grab a change of clothes since we’re here,” he demands, as if surprised Stiles needs the orders. “Hurry up. If you’re fast enough, we can get back to the car before it gets too dark.”

Stiles is positive he’s gaping unattractively, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Derek would want to come with him. That is, he’s a werewolf; he could probably survive on radioactive rodents and rainwater better than Bear Grylls. Without any humans around, he could make a nice living, not having to worry about hunters or intruders or stupid lost joggers stumbling through his woods. It’d be perfect for a lone wolf like him.

He opens his mouth, stupidly, to ask if he’s sure, but what comes out instead is logic. “We can crash here for the night,” rational Stiles voices. “And head out in the morning. Since there are beds and all. There’s no rush,” he adds, though it costs him a measure of effort, and he knocks discreetly on the wooden dining room table. Derek of course, catches him at it, and though he doesn’t say anything— dare he think it?— his expression softens, just slightly.

“Fine. We’ll head out tomorrow at dawn,” Derek accedes, and Stiles has to swallow a few times to unstick the hard lump of gratitude, relief, and something-more-than-just-lust that lodges in his throat. It’s not the time for Stiles to be figuring out what that last thing is; _have some taste_ , his conscience sneers at him— _the end of the world is a_ terrible _time for emotional revelations._ But he can still feel it and take comfort in it. He nods hard. After a moment, Derek, still leaning against the sink with his back to the kitchen window, half raises his arm from his side and unhesitatingly, Stiles goes to him.

 

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written 20, August 2011.  
> [](http://strokeof-genie.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://strokeof-genie.livejournal.com/) **strokeof_genie** 's encouragement and feedback was invaluable to the making of this fic; ilu boo!  
> -Apparently, the first thing I do when I enter a new fandom is to latch onto a pair of characters, and then wonder how they'd survive in a post-apocalyptic society, while driving around in a car. It's a problem.


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